Ground-breaking image processing firm Anthropics Technology, based at London’s Ealing Studios, has today announced a new commercial version of image enhancing software for digital pictures.

Anthropics has developed unique image processing capability which enables unskilled users to achieve pro quality touchup in just 2-3 minutes that would otherwise only be possible in 1-2 hours for a skilled artist using Photoshop. This is now offered as a flexible and cost-effective package called “Portrait Professional™” to the world’s booming digital photography market.

For those in the photographic industry this is a complementary tool that can reduce retouching time by upwards of 80% per image, and for the keen amateur this is a package that can create results previously unattainable without becoming a highly adept Photoshop user.

Full News: http://forum.cgarena.com/viewtopic.php?p=8674

mech7

10 October 2006, 02:35 PM

Where is the fun in that.. though HP might be interested in this piece of software :D
[/url][url]http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/tours/slimming/index_f.html (http://62.212.83.7/forums/index.php?showtopic=247059)

Dennik

10 October 2006, 03:06 PM

Touchups are a nasty way of distorting reality. Making people (especially women) insecure about their imperfections, and go buy more beauty products, and spend 2 hours a day in front of a mirror instead of living life.

What a bizarre piece of software! Interesting tech but just a bit too wierd for me, smoothing the odd wrinkle or blemish ok but actually reshaping the face...nah. Hey Dennik, you should try it out on your avatar! :scream:

Dennik

10 October 2006, 03:25 PM

What a bizarre piece of software! Interesting tech but just a bit too wierd for me, smoothing the odd wrinkle or blemish ok but actually reshaping the face...nah. Hey Dennik, you should try it out on your avatar! :scream:

Yeah, can you imagine the program, trying to reshape those huge eyeballs into something acceptable within human beauty standards?

Nah, this program can be very insulting to its users. Its like someone suggesting that you need a major plastic surgery in order to look beautifull.

WesComan

10 October 2006, 03:31 PM

..but then again, as my mate has just pointed out, it's just like a Beer Goggle simulator, it shows the before and after 5 pints :D

Steve Green

10 October 2006, 04:04 PM

I'd like to see one that's more featured, something that uglifies, ages, tints towards different genders, race, combined with a morpher.

I think that would be quite cool for creation of face textures.

- Steve

Layer01

10 October 2006, 04:08 PM

..but then again, as my mate has just pointed out, it's just like a Beer Goggle simulator, it shows the before and after 5 pints :D

LOL
yeah rolling over the photo's in their gallery was quite scary, some of the face mods were quite dramatic. i am not sure i see the point in this app (cool as the tech is), so..you look "smooth" and "shapely" in your photos..but seeing as you live in real life, and those who will interact with you you do to :shrug:
frankly i agree with Dennik.

Steve Green:
yeah i agree, but i am guessing this would be a lot more complicated as it would hace to create new data for the stuff it adds, wrinkles etc.. where as this just seems like it just has to smooth/blur/blend/distort the existing pixels...but maybe if it has a larg data base of wrinkles and stuff that the user could blend into faces? hmm yeah, would be cool.

Nah, this program can be very insulting to its users. Its like someone suggesting that you need a major plastic surgery in order to look beautifull.

Like it or not all the fashion photos are heavily touched up in post to erase all the imperfections.

arctor

10 October 2006, 05:25 PM

bah...junk

BTW - is it just me or does the center inage in their 'gallery' look exactly like a screen grab of this woman from A.I. > http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0337266/
she was the one who's face opens up at the beginning...
YEP! (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.iwaynet.net/%7Esos/sg1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.iwaynet.net/%7Esos/ai.html&h=557&w=605&sz=25&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=5-6o0JJhvp1gwM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3DSabrina%2BGrdevich%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN)
someone's in trouble :)

swardson

10 October 2006, 05:58 PM

whatever happened to reality being beautiful. Im not perfect by anymeans, but I much prefer seeing myself as I am and not some weird computer rendition of what beauty is.

Anyone else notice that "EVERY ONE" of the gallery images was a female. Hum, just another method to make gorgeous women feel inadequite and spend more time alone sulking because they can't get the mirror to look like the girl in the picture on her boyfriends cellphone. Bulderdash, give me wrinkles, freckles, smile lines and bags anyday over this garbage.

I'm not naive, I do own photoshop afterall and have touched up my share of photos, mostly for color correction, removing redeye, unwanted specular etc. But reshaping the face to something that the computer deems beautiful is just sick.

Pretty soon there gonna have real life beer goggles, ie: specs you look through that do this automatically. Then contact lenses. Watch out, fido is looking pretty good these days :eek:

kudos for the guys who figured out how to write beauty into 1's amd 0's, you are smarty than I, to bad we don't have the same idea of what beauty is.

-Brad

Crazzy Legs

10 October 2006, 06:24 PM

its nice, but limited.

Solothores

10 October 2006, 06:26 PM

Tried the demo version and to be honest, I am far away of being impressed...

ashrass99

10 October 2006, 07:37 PM

Like it or not all the fashion photos are heavily touched up in post to erase all the imperfections.

Totally agree, none of the photos came out from the photographers desk without touchup.

The retouched once seemed to have lost their charm. They look synthetic, even creepy. Not to mention it simply look like bad photojob, loosing details and crisp. What sad world it’ll be if everyone will look like this.

maX_Andrews

10 October 2006, 02:01 AM

Here's an action for photoshop that does the same thing but better. It took me like 5 minutes to make and it's free.
http://www.3dfightclub.com/~madmax/uploads/retouchexamp.jpg
http://www.3dfightclub.com/~madmax/uploads/maxretouch.zip

To use it, open photoshop and go to the actions tool palette. Click the little arrow in the upper left and go to "load actions." Find the file and click open. It's now a folder in the list of action folders. Open an image to try, make sure it's flattened, select "retouch 1" and hit the play button.
Works best on medium-large images.

Enjoy!

NanoGator

10 October 2006, 04:38 AM

Yeah, can you imagine the program, trying to reshape those huge eyeballs into something acceptable within human beauty standards?

Nah, this program can be very insulting to its users. Its like someone suggesting that you need a major plastic surgery in order to look beautifull.

To be fair, nobody wants to see their face blown up to a 32" screen. Heh.

hominid

10 October 2006, 07:04 AM

Thats very cool Max.

Pete

thematt

10 October 2006, 04:04 PM

hehe funny stuff..some picture are really well chosen..:)
Anyway all actors and actress are most part retouch on picture, but not just on picture also on movies, you wouldn't beleive what I had to do once, get the cellulitis out of a very a famous actress in a very famous movie..
But don't insist I won't tell you..:)

cheers

maX_Andrews

10 October 2006, 06:06 PM

Martin Lawrence in Big Mamma's House?

Fiber

10 October 2006, 09:13 PM

i wonder what this will mean for online dating...

Gonzomuse

10 October 2006, 01:15 PM

I think it's great, besides the fact it can help people understand, or appreciate the process that every model photo they ever see goes through it only costs £40 (about $200 :p, nah about $70)!

The fact that a very cheap piece of software can automate (to some degree) what would of taken an artist a few hours is pretty exciting. Unless of course you enjoy painting out acne.

thatoneguy

10 October 2006, 06:45 PM

This revolution in image processing looks like it applies a median filter to skin tones.. Meh.

P.S. It looks like that action is a better process.

saiko

10 October 2006, 07:08 PM

what's so big deal!? :D

Clanger

10 October 2006, 07:59 PM

Well, Here's my first go at it and for 5 minutes work (if that) I am impressed. Great starting point for further tweeking.

VFX pros have been doing this on moving footage for years. There's nothing groundbreaking about the technology, or any type of milestone. The only thing new that I can tell is that this is a consumer level tool using a ridiculously tricked out process, all based on median kernels.

Regardless, it's still nice to see this coming to the consumer though.

If I recall correctly, Lola VFX, a subsidiary of Hydraulix, was one of the first to commercialize semi-automatic blemish removal and skin smoothing (props to those guys). Granted, they don't have an actual product to sell, it's a service and custom pipeline based on FFI and plugins (and manual work, of course).

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